CHAPTER XVII

SIMON WALTON had been away a week, and the force at the bank had not heard from him, when one morning Toby received a telegram from him dated that day in Atlanta. The carefully chosen ten words ran as follows:

“Meet me with horse and buggy at afternoon up train.”

So Toby went down to the old man’s house, and, unassisted, got out the gaunt animal and the time-worn vehicle with the dilapidated leather hood, and drove to the station. He was in a fine glow of appreciation of the compliment implied by the telegram’s being addressed solely to him, and by the additional fact that on returning from former journeys Walton had either walked home or taken the cars. Toby told himself, with no little unction, that it meant that his employer had something of a confidential nature to impart.

The train had scarcely come to a standstill when Simon, who was on the front platform of the first passenger-coach, sprang down, valise in hand, and, looking much the worse for the dust and fine cinders that lay on him like frost of the infernal regions, walked stiffly toward Toby and the buggy.

“Well, I see you got my wire,” was his greeting, as he relinquished the valise and allowed Toby to put it behind the seat in the buggy.

“Yes, I got it all right,” the clerk responded. “Shall we drive home or to the bank?”

Walton waited till Toby was in the seat beside him; then he replied: “Well, we may as well head for home, though I reckon we could take a sort o’ roundabout direction through the edge of town. I want to tell you what I did out there, and we might not have as good a chance later. My wife will be nagging the life out of me for particulars, and while there are no particulars in this thing that she has any concern in, if I was to be cornered somewhere with you right at the start she’d think it strange. Then, on the other hand, if me and you slid off together the very minute I got to the bank, the rest might think I was partial, and so I thought this slow ride was the very idea.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Walton. I suppose you saw Fred?”

“Oh yes, but not the first shot out of the box.” Walton took off his hat and wiped the perspiration from his brow, upon which lay the red imprint of his hatband, and smiled sheepishly. “The truth is, Toby, the nigher I got to that blamed town the sillier I felt, till by the time I was there and duly quartered at what they told me was their best hotel I hardly knew my hat from a hole in the ground. You see, my predicament was peculiar, and would have been odd to any man in the plight I was in. I didn’t know but two souls in the town. One of ‘em was not only the great high mucky-muck of the place, but a man I’d called a thief and a liar and kicked plumb out of my sanctum when he had called to do me a favor; and the other was—well, he was my only son, who I had treated like a yellow dog. You see, I knew that downright apologies was what I owed both of ‘em; but, Toby, let me tell you something odd—I don’t know how to account for it: but, as just and upright as I’ve always been in my dealings in a general way, I never, in so many plain words, ever told a human being I was sorry. I have been that way, and was willing to try to sort o’ look it, in cases where I was dead wrong; but I’d rather take a thousand lashes on my bare back any day than come right out and beg a fellow’s pardon.”

“I understand,” Toby said, sympathetically. “A great many folks are that way.”

“Well, I don’t think I’m like a great many folks,” Walton replied, as his eyes rested on the back of his horse, “but I couldn’t swallow that pill. So there I was, registered at that fine joint, with a front room all to myself, overlooking the street, and the clerks and nigger porters looking at me, same as to say, ‘Well, what is your game? Are you a whiskey drummer, bank-examiner, detective, stock-drover, or escaped convict?’ I was like a fish out of water. I didn’t know what to do or how to make any sort of start. I sat round the office half the time, and the rest I was flopping about in my room. The first day passed that way, and the next night, in which I had hardly got a wink of sleep. There was a bar-room and gambling-hell right under me, and I could hear some whizzing thing and balls rolling, and a deep voice calling out in some game or other. It was a gay town, and I was in the middle of it. The next morning I determined I’d write Fred a note and let him know where I was at, but I’d no sooner got it ready and backed and sealed than I recalled that Fred wasn’t using his own name, and that a note addressed to him in the old style might cause talk, and so I tore it up. Then I ventured out and, half-scared to death, actually walked by the big store—on the opposite side of the street, though—and peeped in through the windows. It was as busy as a beehive during a swarm, but I couldn’t see head nor tail of Fred. All at once I took the bit in my mouth and started across the street to go in, but was stopped short. And what do you reckon done it, Toby?”

“I can’t imagine, Mr. Walton,” said the clerk, deeply interested.

“Toby, it was that new sign you spoke about—‘Stephen Whipple & Son.’ It was on the front of the big red building, and seemed to me to be just so many long, black letters stalking clean across the sky. ‘Stephen Whipple & Son,’ and the last word, small as it was, overtopped all the rest. The thing simply knocked me silly. Wasn’t it Saint Paul (it was one of them fellows in the good Book) that fell down in some great light that blazed out over him? Mine wasn’t a light; it wasn’t wind; it wasn’t a kick in the jaw from an army mule, but it hit me like all three combined. I was mad; I was sorry; I was ashamed; but I couldn’t walk under that dad-blasted sign. It hung over them doors like a long white sword of an enemy ready to chop me into halves.

“I whirled about and went back to my room and actually hid the rest of the day, wondering how on earth I was going to do the job. Once I packed up my valise and started down to pay my bill, with the intention of shirking the whole thing; but I saw that wouldn’t do. So I passed another day. I read my Bible a little, and I reckon I prayed some. I don’t know, Toby, but I would have bowed down before a heathen idol to have got help out of my predicament. I remembered what you said about seeing Fred at Whipple’s house, and the next night I went out and inquired the way to his place. I found it, and, having nothing better to do, I walked clean around it like you did. Nobody was in sight, but I could see lights inside, and then the thought came to me that Fred, my son, maybe, was at that very minute in there keeping company with that old man and woman, and that made me feel as bad as the sign had. I tried to argue that I’d been right in pinning down on the boy for what he had done; but I knew there was no stability to my point, for that fat chap had secured better results through a different method, and he wasn’t no blood kin. So I went back to the hotel, and made another night of it. I wasn’t like you. I couldn’t talk to strangers in an off-hand way about it. I tried once to the clerk behind the counter, but I couldn’t make it go. He looked at me mighty curious, and I changed the subject. I think I asked him if that State wa’n’t heavy on hog-raising.”

“You were in an embarrassing position,” Toby remarked, as he shook the drooping lines over the plodding horse’s back.

“I never would have got out of it if it hadn’t been by pure accident,” Walton said. “The office of the hotel was a sort of meeting-place for the young men of the town of an evening, and there was a little smoking and writing room off of it. I was sitting there on the third evening, and the office was thronged with young chaps. Some sort of entertainment was on hand at the opera-house across the street, for a band was playing outside, and the young men in their best outfits were smoking and chatting in the office, when who should I see come in but Fred. He came in at the front door in a swallowtail suit with a light overcoat on his arm, and I tell you the crowd all made way for him. Toby, I am an old man; I’ve been through the rubs; I’ve seen near and dear comrades shot down at my side on the field of battle; I have had all sorts of experiences; but the sight of my boy there looking so much older and more dignified than when I last saw him—a sort of king among his kind—with this one and that one giving him the glad hand, and hailing him right and left with words and smiles of welcome while I was slinking off there—well, Toby, I don’t want to live that over again; I don’t; as God is my Creator, I don’t! I sat there watching him through the door like—well, you’ll have to imagine it, and draw your own conclusions; I can’t tell you how I felt. I was dumb; I was speechless. It was like a double nightmare. I haven’t shed enough tears in my life to drown a gnat, but I wanted to cry good and hearty then.”

“And you met him—I know you did,” Toby broke in. “I see it in your face.”

“Yes, as luck would have it, by accident; he left the others and come right into the room, and I saw that he’d recognized me, for he turned pale as death, and stopped in front of me. Then I saw him steady himself, and a pitiful, resigned look come over him. If I live through eternity, I’ll never forget his first words. What do you think he said?”

“I can’t imagine, Mr. Walton.”

“Toby, he said this—he said this, and the words will haunt me to my grave. They will go with me into the very depths of my last abode. He said: ‘Oh, father, you have caught me! You have come to take me back! Well, I am ready!’

“Toby Lassiter, talk about your—your hells on earth; talk about your flames of despair, the worm that dieth not, and the like. I had ‘em all. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t even have the sense or power to shake hands, and the poor boy misunderstood even that. He pulled up a chair, shaking like a leaf. Nobody was in the room but us two. Then somehow I managed to say that he was mistaken, and that I hadn’t come there for that reason. I wanted to talk to the point and justify myself, but I was worse than a stuttering idiot at a spelling-bee. Like a fool, I started in to say that I had heard a lot about the progress of the town, and he thought I had some speculation on foot and had run on him by accident. I no sooner saw that he thought that than I got tangled up worse than ever. Nothing short of begging his forgiveness would set things straight, and I couldn’t have got that out to have saved my soul from perdition.”

“That certainly was awkward,” Toby burst out, like an enthusiast at a play. “It was bad.”

“I reckon we never would have understood each other, Toby, but we started to walk out together, and went along to a side street that run into a park where it wasn’t so light. Somehow we went inside, and before I knew it I had laid my hand on his arm. I never had done a thing like that in all my life, and all of a sudden we stopped and he looked right in my face. It was too much for me, Toby. I couldn’t hold in any longer. But it didn’t do any harm, for I saw he understood me, and that was enough. He was the happiest creature I ever laid eyes on; he laughed and cried and petted me, and said that he loved me a hundred times more than he did old Whipple and his wife. Then we sat down on a bench under the trees and talked it all over. He talked to me more openly than he ever did before. He wanted to come home above all things, but he wanted to put it off awhile. He told me about him and Margaret Dearing. She was the only real sweetheart he’d ever had, he said, and he could never care for anybody else. It seems that they met by accident awhile back in New York, and she gave him to understand that she didn’t care any more for him. He said it was because she knew of his shortage at the bank. But I told him how you and me had kept that quiet, and not to let that bother him. But he told me something that we didn’t know: he said he had confessed it to her brother the night he left. He said a woman as high and proud as she was never could overlook anything bordering on dishonesty, no matter how much it was atoned for.”

“She wouldn’t be so hard on him if that was all, Mr. Walton,” Toby said. “But, of course, she heard about the other thing; in fact, the girl and the child are right there under her eyes.”

“That occurred to me while me and him was talking,” Walton said; “but I simply couldn’t bring up a nasty thing like that at such a time. I thought that might as well rest; in fact, it looked to me like he thought his name had never been mixed up with it. You see, Toby, maybe the woman promised that it shouldn’t get out, and has kept him from knowing of the report in order to bleed his pocket. At any rate, he don’t seem to suspect what folks are saying here at home. I know he wants to keep me in the dark, for he boldly asked me about Dora Barry, among other inquiries. I was astonished at it, but he wanted to know if she’d ever got married, and when I told him no, he went on to say that she was the best friend he’d ever had among the home girls, and that she had a beautiful character, and the like. He went on to say that she was the finest painter of pictures he had ever seen, and that when he left he was sure she would make a great artist out of her turn that way. He asked me if she had put her talent to any use, and I told him if she had I hadn’t heard about it. Then he said—he did—that he was going to sit down and write her a friendly letter, and tell her where he was at, now that me and him had made up. I thought he was piling it on pretty heavy, you know, but I never let on.”

“That was best, of course,” Toby opined, reflectively. “Folks are not apt to throw up a thing like that to a man who has turned over a new leaf, and it may be many a year before he discovers how much has really been talked on that line. But you didn’t tell me, Mr. Walton. Did you see Fred’s—did you see Mr. Whipple?”

“It went powerfully against the grain, but I had to,” the banker said, gruffly. “I was in for making a beeline back home without having to swallow that dose, but Fred wouldn’t hear to it. He said the old skunk would feel hurt. I didn’t care a dad-dratted cent whether he felt hurt or not; in fact, I felt hurt to have him dragged in at all. I’m glad the boy has landed in such a pile of clover, but I don’t like Whipple any too much, and I reckon that dang sign of his was my Belshazzar’s warning on the wall. But it is this way—well, you know what I mean. I reckon a body can look at it from any direction—level, sink, or angle—and the fact will still stick out that the boy is divided, and will have to remain divided from now on. That ain’t usual, Toby; it is crooked. It sort o’ gives the lie to my success as a father. I won’t go into it any further. The whole thing out there, though, would have gone off smooth enough if that old cuss hadn’t been in it. He had a slobbery way of talking to Fred, and put his hands on him every chance he got. They asked me out to dinner at Whipple’s house to meet the old woman, but I drew the line at that. I was sure she’d act the fool as bad, or worse, than Whipple had, and so I wouldn’t go. I never was mushy in that way myself, and I can’t stomach them that are. Whipple is going to leave him all he’s got, and I want Fred to get all he can of the good things in life, but I’ll be dad-blamed if I wanted ‘em to come exactly that way.

“Whipple set there in his office and made out a list of his possessions, and it looked to me like he was making everything look as big as he could out of pure spite. Not once did he say—Toby, he didn’t say a single time that I had any sort of justification in pinning down on the boy like I did. He might have done it, but he didn’t. He always cocked himself up and talked in a roundabout, sneaking fashion, like he was giving underhanded digs. Toby, I want the boy back here, that’s all. I want him back here in the bank to take my place after I’m gone. I don’t think I could stand it to be beat to a cold, dead finish by that old chump in a fight of exactly this kind. Whipple said Fred could sort o’ play between the two places—stay awhile here and awhile there, but I want to tie him down good and tight to old Stafford. I’ve got an idea how to do it, Toby, and it ain’t a bad one.”

“What is it, Mr. Walton?” the clerk asked, eagerly.

“Why, Toby, I ain’t much at match-making, but I am going to try my hand at the game. Now, if I could only persuade Margaret Dearing to be sensible, like most women always have been in regard to the early slips of the men they marry—if I could persuade her to overlook the only thing that now remains against the boy—”

“They would get married, and both would prefer to live here!” Toby broke in, eagerly.

“That’s the point, Toby,” Walton said. “You’ve hit it. Now drive me home.”